1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to improvements in network design and in particular to improvements in methods and systems for modeling aggregate multimedia traffic within a network. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a method and system for determining sojourn times, average usage rates and a steady state probability that a particular number of calls are in progress for each type of service so that network usage may be accurately modeled for design purposes.
2. Description of the Related Art
No where has the explosion of modern technology been more evident than in the field of communication. The number and type of communication services has been rapidly expanding, including so-called "multimedia" services such as video teleconferencing, video/movies on demand and the like.
The intermixing of these multimedia services with traditional data and voice communications within a shared transmission medium has presented various design problems. Early attempts at accommodating multimedia within a shared transmission medium involved an educated guess as to the percentage of the bandwidth to be allotted to multimedia traffic and that percentage of the bandwidth was fixed thereafter, resulting in an under or over utilization of the transmission medium, if the initial assumptions were not precise or if the nature and quantity of the multimedia traffic varied.
More recently, attempts have been made at statistically modeling aggregate traffic which originates from homogeneous services with similar traffic types and similar characteristics. For example, the Poisson Process is widely utilized to model aggregate traffic from voice sources. Similarly, the Discrete Auto Regressive Process has been utilized to model aggregate traffic from video teleconferencing sources. The Markov Modulated Poisson Process is often utilized to model aggregate traffic from data sources. While these techniques are useful design aides in networks having multiple homogeneous sources of similar traffic types and characteristics, none of these techniques can be utilized to accurately model a network having aggregate traffic from heterogeneous multimedia sources.
Those skilled in the art will thus appreciate if a method and system can be provided which can accurately model aggregate traffic from heterogenous multimedia sources within a shared transmission medium, bandwidth utilization within the transmission medium can be efficiently utilized and customer satisfaction and network effectiveness can be enhanced.